Sunlight and Stained Glass
by Tallulah Grammar Songstress
Summary: Each of L's successors finds solace, of a sort, in Wammy's House - at least compared to what they've left behind.


_Near_

There are many good things about Wammy's House, but one of the best is the not-talking.

After it happened, it was all white. He woke up in hospital and it was all white and in his head it was all white, too. He didn't mind, it felt like it made sense. Everything had gone in the screechy brakes and the yelling and now there was just white. But they asked him to tell them stuff, asked him how he felt, and he didn't want to pick up the white and look at the stuff underneath (he'd not wanted to do that even before, like not looking under plaster on a cut, or not looking under stones). But they did let him play with toys. The hospital let him play with toys anyway but there were other children and snatching and he was tired a lot then anyway and hurting still and so it was better in the office with the lady who had a special box of toys and just wanted to watch him play with them and write stuff down. The toys moved through the white. They did that back in the main hospital too, over the sheets.

At Wammy's House they didn't ask him to tell them stuff, they just asked him to do puzzles and things and then when he did those fast they gave him harder ones. Everything was still white so he could see how to solve the puzzles really easily, so maybe that was why other people couldn't? Maybe there was too much colour? But he had been good at puzzles before, Mum or Dad had started saying _Nate you don't need my help you are doing it all on your own!_ and and and these puzzles were _better_, and it was just about them, the solving them, it wasn't about Mum and Dad and doing stuff for fun.

They've given him a new name which is better too. Because in the hospital they kept saying to him _Nate how are you feeling_ and it was bad because Mum and Dad were the ones meant to be calling him that and asking him and he understands it _now_, he's not a baby, he knows they're not coming back, but then it was confusing. Sad-confusing. He doesn't like things being confusing. Being _Near_ makes it all much easier. Also it makes sense. A _near-miss_, he heard the doctors saying, so it's like Mr Wammy knows. Which he probably does. He knows a lot of things. Specially he knows Near doesn't like being asked how he feels about it all. The things are under the white and that is best. He can maybe look at it later, when he's older, when there aren't any puzzles left he doesn't know how to solve.

_Mello_

He can't decide if he hates it here or if it's better than home at least.

Like, it's _school_. It's school the whole time and that's shit, right? Because he hated school, he was always bored and the other kids were always saying _I saw your mum_ or _I saw your dad_ and he knew they were trying to get him angry but it was more like he was angry before, _anyway_. Because it didn't fit, or he didn't fit, sometimes he couldn't come in for days and then the teachers would be angry too, they'd be cross with him for not turning up as if it was his fault and it _wasn't_, it wasn't fair. Always shouting and the thing was he knew he could shout louder than anyone and if you kept being angry mostly other people burnt out, but the trouble was with that then they passed you on to someone else and the next thing you knew everyone was having a go at you. Just like you had to turn up to this stupid place every day and they made you do really boring things you already knew how to do and then someone laughed at you or told you off, and sometimes even he got tired of being angry all the time.

Wammy's House is different, because no one fits really here. Everyone's the kind of person that their school thought was weird, and of course no one knows who his mum and dad are. He likes the fake name thing because of that, no one's going to trace him back. Like a spy! He looked up _mellow_ in the dictionary and it went on about _soft_ and _sweet_ and that was rubbish, but then he thought about it and worked out it was probably okay because it was a code name. No one would think it was him with a name like that. _And_, it was like how some people thought he was really sweet because he had blond hair. So far Mr Wammy doesn't seem like he'd fall for those kind of tricks, but maybe he has if he chose a code name like that?

Like a spy. And this is a special spy school. It certainly feels like that kind of, a big old house with lots of velvet curtains and thick carpets and dark corridors. Like a ghost story. He likes being in a story, it's better than _I'm at school forever all the time now because I don't have anywhere else to live_. And when you get angry it's like the house soaks it all up, it's so big it can do that, and that's rubbish kind of because you want everyone to _listen_ when you're mad but at the same time it's sort of good because it's like, you get mad and then everything's still okay afterwards, still standing.

_Matt_

He wonders sometimes who the other kids are, or who they were, before. All of them seem like they come from weird places. Like some of them, they seem like they were grown in a lab and it didn't quite work, and others are the sort of kids he'd met in care before, kids who'd had bad things happen to them and didn't make sense inside. None of them seem like him, just a regular kid whose mum couldn't look after him when he was a baby and so gave him to someone else.

Mello asked once - challenging, like he was expecting to have a _who had the worst childhood_ competition. But when he learnt that he just let it go, just shrugged and rolled off the bed to look for a comic underneath it and didn't say anything. Matt - he doesn't mind being Matt, it was a care lady who named him Mail so it's not like it's anything to do with him really - Matt nearly asked Mello what had happened to him, but then he figured he didn't _want_ to hear about the bad things, and Mello would probably only get mad at being asked anyway. Maybe he thought it was losing, having bad things. Matt doesn't think it is. Sometimes he feels too normal for Wammy's House, he thinks they'll send him back to a regular care home with regular kids. He isn't sure whether he'd be sad or not. At a regular place, things would be more boring - especially because Mello wouldn't be there - but Matt can deal with boring, he'd still have his Gameboy. And yeah, Mello wouldn't be there and he and Mello are best friends - Mello decided it - but there would be other friends, and maybe more of them would be like him, with nothing good, nothing bad, just in-the-middle.

On the other hand, it's nice _not_ to have so much boring, and Mello's definitely the best person Matt's ever known for thinking of stuff to do. And some of it's really sort of scary but some of it's loads of fun and some of it's both, whereas most of the stuff other people wanted to do, before, wasn't that fun and he usually took out his Gameboy in the middle of it, especially if it was something about going outside. (Actually something that is the same is that people still moan at him for playing too many computer games. It seems like everyone everywhere thinks you should be more interested in something else. Although Matt thinks Mello quite likes it really, because with everyone else he always has to wonder what they think of him, whether they're scared of him or whether he should be trying to win stuff with them. With Matt, Mello knows he's more interested in something else.)

Anyway. He's decided, whatever happens he'll stick with _Matt_ now. He likes being _the person Mr Wammy chose to come to his school_, even if it doesn't last forever.

_L_

L does not like returning to Wammy's House.

He knows, of course, that it is typical to have conflicting emotions on returning to your childhood home. Nostalgia for your younger self and for the comfort of the childhood rituals cocooning you. Frustration that you are expected to conform to a role you no longer fit. Wistfulness when you notice how things have changed, or when you realise your family are people just like you. But he had lost faith in childhood rituals long before growing up there; it does nothing but expect him to perform the role he now has; and as for change - well, the only person who'd prompt wistfulness in him by their aging would be Watari, and so far Watari remains unaltering, as unreadable and yet understandable as he always has been.

No, it's other people's emotions that perturb him, not his own. His successors are raw, bruised, still reeling from harsh light and mundane tragedies. Letting go of their old roles as damaged, useless, unloved, and grasping at their new one of - well, even for those that don't succeed him, they'll still grow up to be _clever. Talented. Genius_. Snatching at something they don't even know they have, or certainly don't always know they want, like someone trying to catch sunlight in their fingers.

L, watching through diamond-patterned windows a group of them playing football in the courtyard, wonders whether he simply doesn't like seeing himself reflected. He remembers becoming who he is now. Finding himself lost in the first case he solved. A first sip of coffee, and little pink cakes on a bone-china plate. Turning the pages of a newspaper to read the report of a murderer who'd killed decades ago being brought to justice. But he doesn't remember - no, that's not correct. He remembers the arrival. The snow, the bells. Someone crying. Sunlight and stained glass. But he is not in these memories. He does not choose to look harder. He does not wish to catch any glimpse. But sometimes, seeing the children here, he thinks that he does anyway.


End file.
